Kimi Raikkonen not happy with the qualifying position at Hockenheim – Formula 1 news
Despite being able to make it to the podium at the third place, Kimi Raikkonen is not happy with his performance at the German Grand Prix as he believes that they could have performed better.
In the German GP, Raikkonen was able to make it to the podium after the post-race 20-second penalty to Sebastian Vettel. He was actually at the fourth position with a 16.4-second difference from the winner of the grand prix, Fernando Alonso.
However, after the penalty to Sebastian Vettel, he dropped to fifth place resulting in promotion of the Finnish driver.
Raikkonen believes that he could have done better if he had achieved better place in the qualifying round. He was only able to get 10th grid place in the qualifiers and managed to finish the grand prix at 3rd place.
Commenting on the race held at Hockenheim, the Finnish driver said that he is satisfied with his start but Lewis Hamilton of McLaren had some problems with his vehicle, which forced him to slow down to avoid accident.
Moreover, he said that this slow down gave Paul di Resta of Force India a chance to get ahead of him, which was difficult to cover.
The fastest lap record holder believes that if he had more pace in the wet he could have competed with the leaders. But still he is satisfied that eventually he was able to bring good points to his team, Lotus.
“We did the best we could today from the position we started. My start was okay, but then I think Lewis [Hamilton] had a problem in front of me and I had to slow down to avoid hitting the back of his car. This let Paul [Di Resta] through in the DRS zone
and from there we had a big hill to climb as it was tricky to get back past,” Raikkonen said.
Before Raikkonen was promoted to the third position, Alan Permane, director of track side operations, commented that they lost a considerable amount of time in the early laps of the race. He further added that later they were able to achieve the speed of
the leaders but it was too late by that time. He commented that this was the reason they could not make it to the top three and to achieve such a place they would have to perform better from the very start of the race.
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